Will the sky fall in Massachusetts?
By W. James Antle III
web posted May 17, 2004
By the time you read this, Massachusetts will have begun issuing
marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The state will then serve
as the main laboratory in the American experiment with gay
marriage.
Within only a few days, if even that long, activists will declare this
experiment a resounding success and point to the Massachusetts
experience as conclusive evidence that the redefinition of
marriage nationwide can proceed without any ill effect.
After all, they will triumphantly proclaim, the sky did not fall. This
has become a major talking point in favor of this family-law
revolution: People who are reluctant to change the terms of
marriage, a fundamental building block of society, are Chicken
Littles and the sky will not fall. Powerhouse pundit Andrew
Sullivan, writing in the Philadelphia Inquirer, framed the issue
characteristically: "Will heterosexuals now stop marrying because
gay people can? Will the birthrate plummet? Will the sky fall?"
I was recently confronted by someone who assured me that
"society won't crumble" after May 17. Congressman Barney
Frank (D-MA) has said that efforts to amend the state
constitution will fail once voters realize "they sky won't fall" with
the arrival of same-sex marriage.
Perhaps the bar for sweeping change in a vital institution ought to
be set a little higher than whether it will result in imminent social
catastrophe, but this seems a little simplistic. We were assured
that the sky would not fall if divorce became more
commonplace. A generation later, there is ample social-science
data to confirm what many people already knew based on
tradition and common sense – the resultant weakening of family
life would do palpable harm to children.
Did the sky fall when out-of-wedlock birth rates among African-
Americans approached 70 percent annually? How about when
fatherless families proliferated throughout the country? Scarcely
anyone now disputes the mountains of evidence that these two
phenomena of family breakdown have brought with them
increases in poverty, crime, illiteracy, drug abuse, welfare
dependency and other social pathologies.
What do these facts have to do with gay marriage? First, they
show the risks inherent in tampering with the institution of
marriage. Second, they demonstrate that it takes time before the
full consequences of social changes can be known.
Americans are very conflicted about marriage and the family. On
the one hand, they realize that children need both mothers and
fathers and that family breakdown has negative consequences for
the nation. On the other hand, due to their awareness of their
own imperfections and a desire not to offend other people they
care about by appearing judgmental toward their lifestyles, they
are reluctant to take any steps to do anything about it. I
understand why some people desire gay marriage and find it
hurtful that others disagree.
Yet we cannot say that parents of children should get married
and aspire to children being raised by mothers and fathers as the
ideal while simultaneously providing identical support and
recognition to every other conceivable arrangement. Our society
needs a mechanism for bringing fathers and mothers together in
families rearing the next generation. Traditionally, that mechanism
has been marriage. But what will serve that purpose once the
meaning of and reason for marriage has been changed? Looking
at European countries that already have full or de facto gay
marriage, there is not much evidence of a thriving marriage
culture.
Too often, the debate bogs down over whether gays are
"worthy" of marriage. Many same-sex marriage opponents argue
that they are not, while proponents speak of the need to expand
marriage to realize the loves and relationships of a marginalized
minority. But same-sex marriage does not simply open marriage
to an excluded group. It changes the very definition of marriage
and alters its reason for being.
Don Browing and Elizabeth Marquhardt wrote in an op-ed piece
for the New York Times that same-sex marriage reduces
matrimony "primarily to an affectionate sexual relationship
accompanied by a declaration of commitment. It then gives this
more narrow view of marriage all of the cultural, legal and public
support that marriage gained when its purpose was to encourage
and temper a more complex set of goals and motivations." Gay
nuptials would not be the first innovation to have this effect on
marriage, but before we undertake another we should ask
whether this trend has reinforced or undermined the institution's
central purpose.
Is same-sex marriage compatible with the ideas of a marriage
culture, based on fatherhood and motherhood, or is it, in
syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher's words, "the triumph of
the most radical ideas of the sexual revolution: that gender
doesn't matter, children are secondary, expressing your authentic
sexual self is more important than, well, practically anything
else"?
If only we could rely on a sign as unambiguous as whether or not
the sky fell to ascertain the full implications of the Bay State's
experiment. But when it comes to changes of this nature, our
children and grandchildren are often in a better position than we
are to identify the Chicken Littles.
W. James Antle III is an assistant editor of The American
Conservative and a senior editor for Enter Stage Right. The
views expressed above represent his alone.
Enter Stage Right -- http://www.enterstageright.com